fellowship of st john the divine

“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in [the] prayers” (Acts 2:42).

Having to explain what the Fellowship of St. John the Divine (“the Fellowship”) is, what it does, and what is its target audience, is probably the most daunting task any Fellowship president has to do; and most often unsuccessfully. To help with this, a few years ago the Fellowship launched this series of Fellowship Footnotes to look each month at different aspects of the Fellowship.

Perhaps the main difficulty is that the Fellowship is not constrained to an artificial demographic category, be it age-group, sex, or social class. The answer may be more complicated, since “fellowship” implies a mystical relationship, as we shall see later on in the words of our patron saint, the Holy Evangelist John. This relationship is involved with other aspects of Christian living found in the early Church, aspects we tend to forget about amidst the many distractions in our lives. It might be helpful for us today to examine precisely this “fellowship” that the Apostle describes in the book of Acts.

Fellowship in the life of the Church

“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine” (ti didachi ton apostolon).